Disappointed
by Not A Stranger
Summary: Mrs. Lowery thought she was doing the best she could. A look at Lloyd's mother  from the series Breakout Kings .


When Dana Chapman is five years old, she tells her mother that she wants to be an astronaut. Her mother laughs and says that isn't what a young lady grows up to be. Dana watches her mother and realizes she's right. A lady bakes pies, organizes church socials, and waits for her husband to come home with tired eyes. Dana resents this even as she tries to emulate it, and the little girl who wanted to fly to the stars disappears.

Dana meets Lars Lowery at a co-ed mixer. Lars is everything her father is not: fair-eyed and weedy with delicate hands and a sharp tongue. He spends all night arguing with her about politics and religion. It's love at first sight.

Lars is a doting husband for all nine months of Dana's pregnancy. It's after their son is born that he starts growing distant, but she doesn't care. She loves the way her baby curls up against her when he feeds, the toothless smiles he gives her while he plays. It's when he starts to crawl, when he's constantly getting into things he shouldn't, that she feels the stress of motherhood. She asks Lars for help, but he says he's too busy. She starts nagging him, so he spends longer hours at work. She yells at him, but he doesn't yell back. She wishes he would. Anything is better than the stony silence she gets in return.

One day, Lars doesn't come home from work. She gets divorce papers in the mail. Her family is disappointed. Lloyd cries in the evenings and asks for Daddy. One night she snaps and screams that Daddy is never coming home, that Daddy hates them.

Lloyd still cries at night, but he doesn't ask for Daddy anymore.

She can tell her son is special when he starts reading all the labels in the supermarket. He is only two. She gets him evaluated and sent to a special pre-school. Toys are replaced with books and puzzles. She makes flashcards and buys a computer. Finally, her college education has a purpose.

As Lloyd grows, he reminds Dana more and more of her ex-husband. It isn't just in the color of his eyes or the shape of his nose, it's the way he has a smart answer for everything, a cool arrogance that he doesn't try to hide. When he comes home from school, bruised and dirty, she has little sympathy. He needs to learn to not mouth off at other kids, she thinks. He needs to learn respect.

Dana likes to drink. It frees her tongue and lets her say things she normally keeps bottled inside. But sometimes, she admits, she goes too far. She says things to Lloyd that a mother shouldn't say to a son. She's not as bad as her father, though. She never hits him, and she tells him that she loves him, later, when she's sober.

When Lloyd is ten, he asks about his father. Dana takes pity on him and makes up a story about Lars. He's a very important man, she explains, but he lives in Holland. He loves Lloyd but it's just not possible to visit. Lloyd accepts this story without question. It's a lie they're both happy with.

When Lloyd is fourteen, he starts paying way too much attention to his changing body. Dana worries this will interfere with his college education. She gets a pair of oven mitts. It's what her mother recommended. Lars never would have approved.

Screw Lars, she thinks. He's not here to help. She looks for the duct tape.

Dana watches a show on Oprah about parents who push their children too hard. Dana sees herself in the mothers and the fractured relationships they have with their children. She feels guilty. She buys the book that the expert wrote and reads it cover to cover. When Lloyd graduates from medical school, she tells him how proud she is. "Sure you are, Mother," he grumbles. His eyes are just like his father's.

She throws the book in the garbage.

She's not surprised when she gets the call from jail. She always knew Lloyd's gambling problem would catch up with him eventually. She is disappointed. All that he had accomplished – his medical degree, his tenured professorship – all down the drain. He could have done so much more with his life.

She is so disappointed. But what she admits to herself only after downing a bottle of wine and sobbing through a box of tissues, is that she isn't just disappointed in him.

She is disappointed in herself.


End file.
